The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that food aid for 1.4 million people in Chad faces a “looming halt” because there is no money, even as the country is experiencing an influx of refugees from the fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region.
On the other side of the continent, climate change has upended lives and livelihoods across the Horn of Africa in the last two years. The United Nations has said 4.3 million people, a quarter of Somalia’s population, are at risk of “crisis-level hunger or worse” this year due to drought and floods. According to Somalia’s disaster management agency SoDMA, the torrential rains have affected nearly 1.5 million people in South-Central and caused the death of at least 50 people. Its data shows that 687,235 people in the Gedo, Hiraan, Bay and Bakool regions were forced to flee their houses, as floodwaters swept away key bridges and destroyed up to 6,000 houses.
Funding shortfalls and increasing humanitarian needs mean World Food Programme (WFP) will have to pause food for millions of displaced people and refugees in Nigeria, Central African Republic and Cameroon beginning in December. These are people who have experienced war, compounded by climate change propelled natural disasters. Children are the hardest hit and are experiencing life changing food insecurity which could lead to starvation.
It’s time for people in Western coun tries to dig deep and help their fellow citizens of planet Earth who are suffering from the impacts of a change to the climate that they did little to cause. @WFP @SavetheChildren @IRC @Oxfam #WFP #SavetheChildren #IRC #Oxfam